Monday, February 22, 2016

The Ad Blocking Wars - The New York Times

From an ad-blocking reality check

"But he said the number of ad blockers is creeping back up, so Ars Technica plans to start a program similar to ones that have been used on a trial basis on other sites like Wired, The Washington Post, Slate and The Atlantic. The goal is to detect people who are blocking and inform them of ways to support the site. They can selectively unblock the site, subscribe, buy temporary access or just keep reading knowing it’s depriving the site of needed revenue. A possible gauge of the effectiveness of guilt is listener-supported NPR, which has a 36 percent donation rate.

“The temptation is to block these people who honestly aren’t going to respond to ads anyway,” Mr. Fisher said. “I think what everybody should focus on is the educational aspect and give people the option to pay for an ad-free experience.”

Google recently began offering that option with its Contributor program. And Sprint’s Boost Mobile is testing a program where it actually pays users to look at ads."